He Has Driven Me CRAZY Today!!!

Meet Rooster.  He has been one pain in my backside today!  It started earlier in the morning.....I was cleaning out our old house down the road and I went outside to only hear his "sweet" little voice.  He just so happened to be right near the fence sweet-talkin to the ladies trying to get them to come his way.  The only problem is that it isn't time to visit with the ladies.  He had gotten out of his pasture and made his way down the road to where they are.  After much frustration on both our parts.....he was returned not ever-so-kindly back to his place. 

Thinking of a way to get over this gate

I fixed what I thought to be the problem....a gate that doesn't have the best latching system.  Only to find out later that the particular gate mentioned wasn't the problem.  He made way back out again.  Finally I found the spot.  He was put into a smaller pasture that is surrounded by hotwire.  We'll see if this keeps him in....If it doesn't, I might be inclined to have this fella hanging on my living room wall as a discussion piece.  Nah.....Just kidding :)

Rooster Cogburn

A Little Day Trip to LA

I can't begin to tell you how many times I have sat down in front of this computer to try to get a new post going. It seems each time I start, something comes up...... or I just have this mental block that will not allow me to put my thoughts into words. It seems the older I'm getting, I get all kinds of "mental blocks"......especially the one that causes me to wonder why in the world am I standing in the laundry room with a freshly made pitcher of tea trying to put it in the cabinets. Or the time when I couldn't find a USB cord for my camera and I finally found one in the bottom of my sock drawer....Or the time I looked for 30 minutes to find my keys, only to find them still in the deadbolt of our back door from the day before. Yep. Slept all night with my keys in the door. Am I the only one that suffers from the many absent minded moments? 

Anywho, back to the original purpose of this post. A couple of weeks ago, our little family took a trip to LA. We were delivering this happy fella to Mr. Nic Girgenti to put with his does.  He was about to go out of his mind seeing our does across the road and not being able to get to them.  When he was unloaded out of the back of Shane's truck, he wasted no time getting acquainted with the ladies. 

DSK Lumberjack

Of course, I left my camera back at Nic's house when we drove to the pasture to put out Lumberjack.  So I didn't get a single picture.  While we were getting a tour, Nic stopped his truck to point out army worms to Shane.  We haven't seen any around here, but have been hearing of the trouble others are having with them causing devastation to the forages in the pastures.  Mr. Mike Kimball was kind enough to use his phone to get a photograph of the army worms for me.  Thank you ;)

army worms
(Photo courtesy of Mike Kimball)

We were also treated to lunch at The Boston Restaurant. It was delicious. Thank you Mike and Nic!

After that, we went over to see Nic's brother, JA, at his store.  On this particular day, the store was celebrating it's anniversary.  All sorts of festivities were going on to celebrate.  They had a trailer outside that was made to look like a red barn full of animals for kids to see. 

Shane and Mike checking out the animals

This was Mal's favorite part; getting to hold a little bunny.  She's been after us to get her one.  We just might have to after this little hands on session.  She loved it!

The kids were also able to see and pet a couple of fawns.  I took pictures of it, but they didn't turn out real well.  I later found that my lens needed some serious cleaning.  It's amazing how much dust had settled on that thing!

I'm  glad we were able to make the trip over to Louisiana.  It was so nice to meet up with good friends.  Hope we will be able to do it again soon.

Happy Hump Day Y'all!!

Diet Mountain Dew

I am soooo gonna need one of these today!   Yes, I just admitted it.  I totally rely on products loaded with caffeine to make it through the day sometimes.  I am a total diet mountain dew-aholic!  I do drink only water every day with a shot of coffee in the morning; but I'm telling ya, occasionally I'm able to get my hands on a diet mountain dew.  And when I do, it makes me flat out  giddy.  It's some sight to see.  Most folks can't handle being around me.  

 

A big thank you to whomever created this magically delicious, heavily carbonated and caffeinated drink.  (That was a mouthful )  I am so gonna need it today!  

Hope y'all have a great Wednesday !

Banana Puddin'

I've been going through the pictures that I have stored on my computer to try to put  some on a zip drive and delete some. I almost have 2100 photos stored on our computer; too many! I usually take photos and then upload them, only to say that I will delete them the next time I work on the blog.....Well, I am in the process of doing that today.  While going through them, I came across this picture. 

Yummy!

We had our Perry County Farm Bureau annual meeting about a month ago. Everyone was to bring a dessert and this is what my honey requested that I take. Banana puddin'. I believe it is one of his many favorite desserts.

The reason I never used this picture, was that I had planned on making a post about our annual meeting and none of my pictures turned out that I had taken that night.  The only one that did was the picture above of the dessert that I took.  While looking at the photo, I got to thinking about making some sort of dessert for after supper tonight......Which also got me to wondering.  Do any of you have a favorite dessert?  If so, what is it? 

 

Cattle Work Day

We had our cattle work day at our place, and of course, it's taken me over a week to get it posted on the blog.   I've started coming  down with a serious case of  procrastination  lately.  Hopefully it will pass soon and a little motivation will come along and give me a swift kick to remind me to get going..... If it were only that simple ;)

OK. So let's get back to the reason for my beginning this post......cattle work day.  One of our neighbors came over to help Shane out, which gave me the opportunity to sit on top of the rail and watch. How nice!  I did take a few photos of it all.  I have to admit, I felt pretty useless sitting up on the rail.  Finally, after asking what I could do to help, my sweet husband told me to stand at a gate that had no latch.  My job was to keep the cows from pushing this gate open.  I tell ya folks, it just didn't feel right letting our neighbor help out while I "watched" the gate.  It may take some getting used to.  Then again, after a day of working the goats/cows when no one is available to help, I may be dreaming of the day I sat on the rail, supervised the non-latching gate, and snapping photos.

All of the cattle were driven into this catch pen (as we call it), and the sorting began.

This was the day for Shane to decide which cows would be kept in the herd and which ones would be sent on to the stock yard.  Any cow that didn't have a calf was culled.  There were two of those.  

We also had 2 heifers that had to have assistance with calving, and by assistance I mean we had to "pull their calf".  Those two ladies left the herd too.  Other than that, everyone checked out pretty good.  All of the bull calves that were in the 6-7 month old range were also banded. 

That there fella in the photo below got to work one of the cut gates.  He did an awesome job following his dad's guidance.  I could definitely see a lot of pride in his face when I mentioned that he was doing such a good job helping the men work the cows.  My little man is growing up way too fast!

A true "cowboy"

 

The Storm Aftermath

Well Hurricane Isaac made his way to our neck of the woods Tuesday afternoon and finally got out of here around Thursday.

We had wind.....

And we had rain.... In this photo below, you can see the does were out in it and made it just fine.  If you look closely near the middle of the line of goats, you will see Sinbad right out there in the middle of them.  He is one awesome LGD!

Shane made his way out during the storm to check on the cattle, horses, goats and dogs.  All seemed to be faring pretty well, other than getting drenched.

The only damage we received on our farm was that we lost this chinaberry tree.  It's amazing that we didn't have any more trees blown down.  Some of those winds were gusting pretty strong through our place.

  

This is the trunk of the tree.  You can see that the wind just twisted it around.  The bucks are in this particular pasture, and I must say they looked pretty pleased about this tree being down.  All of those chinaberries were laid out right within their reach like a buffet.

Oh, and how could I forget the pecans!  Those delicous pecans!  They were blown out of the trees down into the road.  Traffic started coming through and there were squished and squashed pecans all over the roadway.  So sad....Just look at all of those pecan pies that will never be! ;)

With all of the rain that Isaac dumped on us, we had some flooding in our neighborhood.  Luckily we live on a hill, but those below us had to battle the water creeping close to their homes.  With some actually having it in their homes.   Some folks were even stranded.  This picture was taken at the intersection at the end of our road.  Oh, and what do you think about that sign?  I would hope that folks wouldn't need a sign to see that they didn't need to be riding around in that water...........but then again there are some folks that aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.....if you know what I mean.

We actually couldn't get the kids to school on Friday because of all of the flooding.  The school board decided to have school, but there were many kids in our area that couldn't make it past the flooded roads to get to the school.  Can't you see the disappointment on these two?  Especially the one in pink :)

This is on the other side of that intersection. This is Janice/Brooklyn road heading towards Brooklyn. It is so unreal how much a creek can rise and flood surrounding areas.

The water should start receding soon and hopefully not too much damage was done to the roads under all of that water.  We've seen many that were just washed away.   

I pray for those of you that were affected by Isaac.  I pray that you will be able to recover quickly and get back into the swing of things.  God bless!